


The Periphery of Grace

by embolalia



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: BSG season 4, Gen, Lee is a main character after all, Not Exactly Death, and some angst, but canon poofing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-25
Updated: 2015-01-25
Packaged: 2018-03-08 23:14:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3227123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/embolalia/pseuds/embolalia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Lee Adama encounters Leoben Connoy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Periphery of Grace

**I**  
  
The first time Lee Adama meets Leoben Connoy is in the Galatica head, fifteen minutes after their peoples have made peace. He’s stumbled here to get away from the celebration, to try to process. Tigh is a Cylon, and Sam, and Tyrol - and his father seemed like an old man today. It’s all too much, but for seconds at a time the meaning of it all bleeds through the chaos and Lee can’t help grinning. They’re going to Earth.  
  
He steps through the hatch, as he has a thousand times, a million times since the war began, and there in front of him is a Cylon.  
  
Leoben is washing his hands. He turns as he finishes, pauses to consider Lee silently.  
  
Lee stalks toward him. In an instant it’s all come back to him: the reason for the war, all the little horrors its entailed. As clearly as the man in front of him, he can see Kara, tears in her eyes as she tried to talk about New Caprica. He shoves Leoben against the wall, hard.  
  
“If you go near her, I will kill you,” he says slowly, his very teeth on edge.  
  
Leoben stares at him without flinching. “She needed me to guide her. She needed you, too, in the end.”  
  
Lee jerks back. “What?”  
  
The Cylon shrugs out from the circle of Lee’s arms, reaches for a towel to dry his hands. “She needed you to let her go. So she could embrace her destiny.” He drops his towel into the pile and heads toward the hatch, stops there to look back at Lee. “We’re almost there,” he says, and he smiles with a pure joy Lee has never seen from a Cylon before.  
  
The hatch closes. Lee clenches his fists. He could kill Leoben now and he’d be dead forever. But she’d knock him senseless if she knew he’d give up peace and Earth to keep her safe.  
  
  
 **II**  
  
Between Dee’s funeral, settling the quorum, and holding the fleet together, the days after they leave Earth are a blur, so when Lee rounds a corner in Galactica and stumbles straight into Leoben he’s startled to remember the man is still alive.  
  
“Watch where--” Lee starts to snarl, but Leoben shakes his head sharply, and nods down the corridor.  
  
Kara’s sitting against the wall beneath the photos of all of the Colonies’ dead, a bottle next to her. She’s doing something Lee can’t quite make out, digging at the floor with the edge of her dogtags.  
  
“Candle wax,” Leoben says softly.  
  
Lee glances at him in confusion, then nods. He looks at her then, hard, for the first time since they left the ruins of Earth. There’s a hopelessness in Kara’s face that he’s never seen before, not even when Zak died. “What happened to her?” he asks roughly. “What did you do?”  
  
Leoben presses a hand over his eyes, his elbow bumping Lee’s.  
  
Lee recoils.  
  
The Cylon shrugs, his hand falling limp at his side. His eyes are empty. It’s only when Lee starts to move toward her that he answers. “Don’t,” he chokes out. “It’s better not to know.”  
  
Lee’s blood crawls at the words, at something in the strangled tone of Leoben’s voice. When he turns back the Cylon is gone. Lee forces himself down the hallway, tells a joke, sits across from her. He doesn’t ask any questions.  
  
  
 **III**  
  
Lee stands frozen long after his father has cleared the room, Baltar’s words still ringing in his ears. _Necrotic tissue. Dead body. An angel._  
  
He can’t believe it. He knows the softness of Kara’s lips, the quirk of her mouth when she’s feeling vulnerable, the way her skin smells after fighting or frakking - he knows none of that’s changed since she came back. But he saw the look in her eyes when Baltar was talking, and he knows  _she_ believes.  
  
Almost as soon as he steps off the hangar deck, Lee finds Leoben, just as if he’d been looking. “It it true?” he asks immediately.  
  
Leoben’s face falls. “Yes,” he says. “We found her body.”  
  
Lee shakes his head once, twice. It doesn’t make sense. It can’t be true. He should have been there. “Then what is she?” he asks, grief running through him all over again.  
  
Leoben pauses, then tilts his head, starts to walk down the hall. Lee hesitates only a moment before following.  
  
They stop at the memorial hall once again, where Kara’s gazing at the pictures.  
  
“You tell me what she is,” Leoben says, his voice distant as Lee watches her, remembers that scar on her shoulder blade, the uneven length of her hair where she cut it herself.  
  
Lee shrugs helplessly. “She’s Kara.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
  
 **IV**  
  
Lee lands the Raptor with a thud, anxious to be done ferrying passengers and back out in the grass with Kara. He grins to himself. The look in her eyes as she pulled off her boots and ran across the field whooping with joy - it’s all he wants for the rest of his life.  
  
The others have been setting up tents in his absence, but he ignores their shouts, just heads toward the cluster of trees where he saw her last.  
  
He’s halfway there when he sees Leoben. The man is kneeling among the tall grasses, fistfuls of dirt in his hands. His shoulders are shaking silently, tears pouring down his cheeks. Lee is arrested by the sight.  
  
It’s never occurred to him what Leoben might have wanted, might have expected. What might make him cry. Lee wonders what it would feel like to have loved Kara without even the slightest hint that she loved him in return.  
  
Nothing can touch his happiness; he walks on, and leaves the Cylon to himself.  
  
  
 **V**  
  
Hours later, in the dark of night, Lee trips over Leoben’s prone form as he staggers back toward camp.  
  
For a moment hope floods through him before the other man groans and gives himself away.  
  
Lee pulls himself off of Leoben, sits slumped beside him. The smell of broken grass is fresh all around them, the fragrance of their new world, and he wants to tell her. “She’s gone,” he says hoarsely.  
  
The words hang in the air for long minutes before Leoben says softly, sadly, “She was never ours.”  
  
“She was never yours,” Lee snaps. The other man is silent. “She was never mine,” he whispers to the darkness.  
  
“I never understood,” Leoben answers, the same deep ache beneath his words.   
  
Lee shakes his head. “Then how did we get here?” There has to be an answer. She has to be here somewhere.  
  
“The Sixes believe that God is love. She loved us.”  
  
“She wasn’t a god!” Memory slices through him. “No matter what she made them call her.” Lee closes his eyes. “She was just this amazing, beautiful, screwed up, brave woman.” He falls back in the grass, the truth of Kara Thrace on his lips. Tears slide down the sides of his face into the dirt of their new world. He whispers the only question he really wants an answer to. “Will she come back?”  
  
Leoben fumbles in the dark until he finds Lee’s hand. They hold on, clutching at solace. The stars above them are silent and bright.


End file.
